Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0060193727, Hardcover)

Mike Magnuson's Lummox: The Evolution of a Man is a highly entertaining memoir of a bright twentysomething guy floating through life in small-town Wisconsin. The character Mike Magnuson (the book is written in the third person) sees light at the end of the tunnel but is in no hurry to get there. And why not? He has no worries so long as he has a job, beer, drinking buddies, and women to help pass the time. Magnuson climbs the dwelling-space ladder (if only a few rungs) from living at home, to crashing in a closed school's music room that he rents to practice drumming (but mostly holds parties for underage girls), to renting a basement space from the main lesbian power base at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, to shacking up with a long-term girlfriend. In addition to changes in his living situation, Magnuson changes menial jobs, friends, and--after an amusing incident lands him in jail for a holiday weekend--his philosophy and outlook on life, at least for a short while. Magnuson writes an easygoing memoir with wit, hilarity, a liberal dose of scatology, and self-deprecation that never turns to self-pity. You can't help but like this Lummox. --Michael Ferch